Harm

How to spell harm

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce harm

What does harm mean?

1. nounPhysical injury or damage, or a negative effect on something.
2. verbTo injure or damage a person, animal, or thing.

Harm in a sentence

• noun

  The new policy was designed to reduce harm to the environment.

• verb

  Too much sun can harm your skin over time.

• noun

  A small dose of the medicine does no harm to most patients.

• verb

  The company promised that the process would not harm local wildlife.

Where does harm come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Harm comes from the Old English noun 'hearm', which meant 'hurt, injury, grief, or evil'. It belongs to a wider Germanic family, with close relatives in Old Norse 'harmr' (grief, sorrow) and Old High German 'harm' (insult, injury), all tracing back to a shared Proto-Germanic root meaning damage or affliction. In its earliest English use the sense could be quite emotional, covering distress and sorrow as much as physical wounding, before settling into the modern idea of injury or damage. The matching verb 'to harm' was already in use by the same early period, formed straight from the noun without any added ending. Because the word is short, native, and spelled exactly as it sounds, its only mild snare is the silent stretch of 'ar' rather than any tricky ending.

How the word is built

• harm (single Old English root meaning hurt or injury; no prefix or suffix)